With over 50 years’ experience in the events and meetings industry, Kevan Holland and Martin Dempster established the award-winning Trident Hospitality Consultancy a decade ago to help independent venues gain their fair share of agency-generated business. H&E North dropped in for Tea with Trident, an informal online networking event for partner venues to share stories, support each other and catch up on the latest guidance.
When the pandemic started, not one of the venues believed they would be in this position a year on. Vicky Webb from Millennium Point, Birmingham represents just one of the venues locked in a cycle of postponements: “From the middle of March, our business fell off a cliff, and since then we’ve been spending our time either cancelling or postponing events for the third, fourth or even fifth time.”
Rebecca Toner of the OEC, Sheffield was in the unfortunate position of having opened to a Christmas boom in 2019, only to be stopped in its tracks just weeks later: “I’m finding in this lockdown people are more reluctant to postpone again, we’re just hoping something will change to give people that certainty to book.”
Kevan believes the real challenge is the unknown: “How can sell if you can’t put a date in the diary? The impact has been incredible if you haven’t got another income stream.” Helen Slater of Incora County Cricket Ground, Derby was one of those lucky ones, having been saved by a summer of international match play and training camps, yet the decline in enquiries still forced redundancies: “The industry opens up, then shuts down again. And at the moment there’s nothing coming through the door.”
Rebecca Barnes of Madingley Hall, Cambridge represents another venue to diversify its revenue streams after striking a contract with its local hospital to provide accommodation and training to keyworkers. By opening its grounds to the public and offering a popular takeaway food service from its café, the conference centre has struck a new relationship with its locality: “Like many venues, we’ve had to change the mindset of how we operate. As a result, many of our local visitors we previously denied access have developed a new relationship with us and we’re hoping that follows through with private functions.”
By continuing to serve their communities in such ways, venue partners have maintained visibility in the hope their efforts will realise future dividends. In helping to transform Millennium Point into a vaccination hub, Vicky’s team are doing their bit to deliver 1,000 jabs a day: “It’s been a brilliant good news story. We’ve secured national coverage, people are seeing our spaces, and our events team are being kept in work. In many ways, it’s quite like running a large-scale event, you have to think about your signage, Wi-Fi, flow – events venues are perfectly positioned to support the NHS on logistical and operational issues.”
Like many businesses, Helen has made use of the flexible furlough scheme to protect the jobs that remain and allow her team to be proactive with enquiries: “We’ve been doing small training events – they don’t make money, but our view is that we’re building relationships for the future.”
Vicky is in her office three days a week, keeping in touch with clients, letting them know the venue is “ready to go”: “90% of the meetings and training events we hosted over the summer were new clients. And that came from just carrying on maintaining that presence. But it’s tough for clients to make commitments when the stop-and-start nature of restrictions left many with their fingers burnt.”
Kevan believes frustration about the lack of government support is shared not only by his members, but the industry as a whole: “Without question, all of our venues have spent a lot of time, effort and money in making themselves safe for meetings and events. All of that work was carried out on the back of government recommendations – but the industry was suddenly shut back down without question, and we were just forgotten.”
Nicole Parker of Robinson College, Cambridge believes it is the uncertainty not only in hospitality and events, but across industries which makes it nigh on impossible to close a sale: “Clients don’t just need to know when we might be able to accommodate them, they need to know when they can get back into their offices.”
Helen speaks for all members when she says she feels her industry is: “bottom of the heap and blamed for transmission without any real scientific evidence.” Kevan points to research conducted by Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, which showed only 4% of cases in Birmingham NHS trusts could be traced back to meetings, events and hospitality and berated the fact the success of the autumn pilot schemes “seemed to count for nothing.”
But while many large corporate venues chose to go dark, Trident members represent the independent spirit, demonstrating a hunger for new business and a desire to do whatever it takes to restart events safely: “Our clients have heaps of confidence in us that we are safe and secure,” said Vicky. “We want them to pick up the phone and tell us what they want and how we can alleviate their fears. All the venues here are really flexible and open to having conversations. When they’re ready, we’ll be ready.”
For more information about how Trident Hospitality Consultancy can support your venue, visit Tridenthospitality.co.uk.
